The Figure Everyone Sees and No One Names
Anyone who has seen a Nataraja bronze, the image of Shiva dancing inside a ring of fire, has seen Apasmara without necessarily being told his name: he is the small, twisted figure crushed beneath Shiva's right foot, usually depicted as a dwarf, sometimes shown with a snake, and consistently shown alive, conscious, and pinned rather than dead.
The name itself, from Sanskrit, is built from apa, meaning away or removed, and smara, meaning memory or awareness - Apasmara is, literally, forgetting, or more specifically the medical and spiritual term for a kind of unconsciousness or seizure, extended in this context to mean the fundamental forgetting of one's own true nature that the tradition calls avidya, ignorance.
He is sometimes called Muyalaka in the Tamil Shaiva tradition centred at Chidambaram, where the specific bronze form of the Nataraja icon developed most fully, and in some tellings he is described as a rakshasa who attacked a group of rishis performing a yajna, or as a manifestation of the delusions those rishis themselves generated when they mistakenly believed their own ritual power made them independent of Shiva.
What matters more than the specific narrative attached to him in any given telling is his consistent role in the iconography: he is not a villain Shiva defeats once and for all, in the way Andhaka or Tripurasura are destroyed. He is a permanent feature of the dance itself.
Why the Dance Never Kills Him
The Nataraja image is built around several simultaneous meanings held in one figure, and Apasmara's presence under the foot is essential to almost all of them.
Shiva's four arms carry a drum, symbolising creation and the sound from which the universe emerges; fire, symbolising destruction and dissolution; one hand raised in abhaya mudra, the gesture of fearlessness; and one hand pointing down toward his own raised left foot, which is understood as pointing toward liberation, moksha, offered to whoever looks on the dance with understanding.
The right foot, planted firmly on Apasmara, is the detail that grounds the whole composition: creation and destruction, the drum and the fire, are shown happening continuously, in the same instant, on top of and in relation to ignorance, which does not disappear from the picture but is held stable, controlled, beneath the dancing figure's weight.
This is the specific theological point the image is usually read as making: ignorance is not eliminated from the world by the divine dance, the way a villain is eliminated at the end of a story. It is subdued, kept in its place, made into the ground the dance is performed on rather than an obstacle the dance has to clear away first. A world entirely free of Apasmara is not what the icon depicts or promises; a world in which Apasmara no longer controls the dance is.
This is also why he is shown conscious rather than dead - a dead demon would end the story. A pinned, awake, permanently subdued Apasmara keeps the dance necessary, ongoing, and eternal, which is exactly what the Ananda Tandava, the dance of bliss performed at Chidambaram, is understood to be.
Chidambaram and the Living Icon
The Nataraja temple at Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu is the primary living site connected to this specific form of Shiva, and it holds an unusual place in Shaiva worship: the sanctum's central object of veneration, in the space called the Chit Sabha, is not a lingam but the bronze Nataraja image itself, with Apasmara included as part of the consecrated icon rather than as separate decoration.
The temple's own tradition connects the site to the legend of Shiva's dance contest with Kali, an episode distinct from the Apasmara story but often discussed alongside it, in which Shiva wins by raising his leg in a gesture Kali, as a modest goddess, will not match - a story that, like the Apasmara iconography, ties dance directly to the resolution of a conflict rather than treating dance as decoration around a separate narrative.
The Chidambaram Nataraja became, from roughly the Chola period onward, the template copied across South Indian bronze casting, and the Apasmara figure beneath the foot is retained with remarkable consistency across centuries of these images, suggesting the theological point was considered essential rather than optional detail.
For a devotee encountering the image today, the practical reading many traditional teachers offer is straightforward: personal ignorance, distraction, forgetfulness of one's own deeper nature, is not something a single moment of insight permanently destroys. It has to be kept underfoot, continuously, through ongoing practice, exactly the way the dance in the bronze is never shown finished.
Common Questions From Devotees
Is Apasmara ever killed in any version of the story?+
No - across the Nataraja iconography and its associated texts, he is consistently shown alive and conscious under Shiva's foot, never destroyed, because he represents ignorance as a permanent condition to be kept subdued rather than a one-time enemy to be eliminated.
Why is the dance called the Nataraja if it also involves this demon?+
Nataraja simply means 'king of dance' or 'lord of dancers' - Apasmara is one specific, essential element within that larger dance form (particularly the Ananda Tandava, the dance of bliss), not a separate story competing with it.
What is the significance of Shiva's raised left foot in the image?+
It is generally read as pointing toward moksha, liberation, offered to the devotee who looks upon the dance with understanding, in contrast with the right foot, which remains planted on Apasmara, keeping ignorance controlled rather than removed.
Is the Chidambaram temple the only place this form of Shiva is worshipped?+
Chidambaram is the primary and most historically significant site, with the Nataraja as the central consecrated image, but the same bronze form, including Apasmara, is reproduced and revered at Shiva temples and in private worship across South India and well beyond it.
About the author
Anjali Mehta · Editor, M.A. Religious Studies
Anjali is the managing editor for Vandnaa and oversees the festival and vrat coverage. She holds an M.A. in Religious Studies and reviews every published article for accuracy, accessibility, and tradition-fidelity.
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